i wanna make a computer game that uses proof assistants and their addictive properties to tell stories about the wonderful world of mathematics that many usually don’t get to experience at all
perhaps due to a dose of perfectionism on my part, i consider this to only have a chance of properly succeeding if the plan involves a bunch of UX-gendered effort that basically requires PhD-level expertise in the field of interactive theorem proving to carry out
perhaps thanks to just the right amount of hubris on my part (or, indeed, maybe due to said hubris), my preferred course of action upon realising this is to strive to become an expert in said field, rather than to discontinue the goal
PSA: Evan Chen’s “Infinitely Large Napkin” has gotta be one of the most important math books out there. It makes higher math incredibly accessible.
I can’t overstate how much it enabled me to do things that would otherwise only be reachable through years of studying pure mathematics at university.
https://web.evanchen.cc/napkin.html
The Napkin project is a personal exposition project of mine aimed at making higher math accessible to high school students. The philosophy is stated in the preamble:I’ll be eating a quick lunch with some friends of mine who are still in high school. They’ll ask me what I’ve been up to the last few weeks, and I’ll tell them that I’ve been learning category theory. They’ll ask me what category theory is about. I tell them it’s about abstracting things by looking at just the structure-preserving morphisms between them, rather than the objects themselves. I’ll try to give them the standard example Gp, but then I’ll realize that they don’t know what a homomorphism is. So then I’ll start trying to explain what a homomorphism is, but then I’ll remember that they haven’t learned what a group is. So then I’ll start trying to explain what a group is, but by the time I finish writing the group axioms on my napkin, they’ve already forgotten why I was talking about groups in the first place. And then it’s 1PM, people need to go places, and I can’t help but think:Man, if I had forty hours instead of forty minutes, I bet I could actually have explained this all.This book is my attempt at those forty hours.
i guess it's time for a new pinned post about talks I gave and other cool stuff :3
In reverse-chronological order:
1. I spent significant parts of 2023–2024 helping prove the value of BB(5), essentially solving the halting problem for all 5-state Turing machines, when ran on the empty tape.
The Quanta magazine ran an article about the effort.
"With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits" https://www.quantamagazine.org/amateur-mathematicians-find-fifth-busy-beaver-turing-machine-20240702/
Later, I gave a talk at the University of Cambridge, together with the founder of the project, about the effort to produce a formal proof of the result.
"Formal verification of the 5th Busy Beaver value" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X6YVEnbLZU
2. In 2024, together with @domi@donotsta.re, we gave a talk at GPN, about using bash for things it shouldn't be used for, such as writing compilers and implementing networking protocols
"bash is a systems programming language" https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn22-244-bash-is-a-systems-programming-language
3. I once got obsessed about bootstrappability and created a self-hosting software development environment, starting from a 512-byte seed in the boot sector. I wrote a series of blog posts about the effort. Some of them still kinda hold up after a few years...
"Fitting a Forth in 512 bytes" https://compilercrim.es/bootstrap/miniforth/
btw if you encounter a paywalled academic article on which scihub doesn't work, feel free to message me and I might be able to help out :3
rail traffic organisation rule 34, kink implied, long
Ir-1 is the instruction manual issued by PKP PLK (the Polish railways infrastructure company), that details the rules of how rail traffic should be conducted on their infrastructure. in particular, section 34 (or rule 34, if you will) details the procedure of how trains servicing spur lines should be handled
in particular, some rarely-used spur lines might branch off at a place where there is no outpost dedicated to handling this switch. to make sure that trains can run on the main line safely, a special-purpose mechanical lock is mounted on the moving parts of the switch to make sure that it cannot be operated without the key
the switch gets locked in the primary (straight-ahead) position, and the key is stored in the dispatcher's building on one of the two stations neighbouring the stretch of track that involves the spur line
when a train that's scheduled to drive onto the spur line is about to be dispatched, the crew is handed the key to the rail switch. until they return it, the track is considered occupied, and no other trains may depart onto the track.
once the key is returned, the switch is guaranteed to be in the primary position again, and trains can again drive on the tracks as if the spur line isn't there
so, to summarize:
– all the fun parts get securely locked to make sure they cannot be used without permission
– the key is a physical embodiment of permission and control
– the key is held by a person in a position of authority
– given a good enough reason, the key can be sometimes issued to allow making use of the locked mechanism
– however, the rules are strict: the key must be returned promptly
my roommate's alarm went off so instead of grabbing her phone and silencing it i started to shake my butt to the rhythm of the melody and now my muscles are sore
WANTED: method of completing projects larger in scope than one manic episode
so, where will we get the next generation of programmers who are actually passionate about their craft, if all the mainstream outlets are trying their best to convince everyone that LLMs are where it's at?
i wanna make a computer game that uses proof assistants and their addictive properties to tell stories about the wonderful world of mathematics that many usually don’t get to experience at all
perhaps due to a dose of perfectionism on my part, i consider this to only have a chance of properly succeeding if the plan involves a bunch of UX-gendered effort that basically requires PhD-level expertise in the field of interactive theorem proving to carry out
perhaps thanks to just the right amount of hubris on my part (or, indeed, maybe due to said hubris), my preferred course of action upon realising this is to strive to become an expert in said field, rather than to discontinue the goal
PSA: Evan Chen’s “Infinitely Large Napkin” has gotta be one of the most important math books out there. It makes higher math incredibly accessible.
I can’t overstate how much it enabled me to do things that would otherwise only be reachable through years of studying pure mathematics at university.
https://web.evanchen.cc/napkin.html
The Napkin project is a personal exposition project of mine aimed at making higher math accessible to high school students. The philosophy is stated in the preamble:I’ll be eating a quick lunch with some friends of mine who are still in high school. They’ll ask me what I’ve been up to the last few weeks, and I’ll tell them that I’ve been learning category theory. They’ll ask me what category theory is about. I tell them it’s about abstracting things by looking at just the structure-preserving morphisms between them, rather than the objects themselves. I’ll try to give them the standard example Gp, but then I’ll realize that they don’t know what a homomorphism is. So then I’ll start trying to explain what a homomorphism is, but then I’ll remember that they haven’t learned what a group is. So then I’ll start trying to explain what a group is, but by the time I finish writing the group axioms on my napkin, they’ve already forgotten why I was talking about groups in the first place. And then it’s 1PM, people need to go places, and I can’t help but think:Man, if I had forty hours instead of forty minutes, I bet I could actually have explained this all.This book is my attempt at those forty hours.
i guess it's time for a new pinned post about talks I gave and other cool stuff :3
In reverse-chronological order:
1. I spent significant parts of 2023–2024 helping prove the value of BB(5), essentially solving the halting problem for all 5-state Turing machines, when ran on the empty tape.
The Quanta magazine ran an article about the effort.
"With Fifth Busy Beaver, Researchers Approach Computation’s Limits" https://www.quantamagazine.org/amateur-mathematicians-find-fifth-busy-beaver-turing-machine-20240702/
Later, I gave a talk at the University of Cambridge, together with the founder of the project, about the effort to produce a formal proof of the result.
"Formal verification of the 5th Busy Beaver value" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X6YVEnbLZU
2. In 2024, together with @domi@donotsta.re, we gave a talk at GPN, about using bash for things it shouldn't be used for, such as writing compilers and implementing networking protocols
"bash is a systems programming language" https://media.ccc.de/v/gpn22-244-bash-is-a-systems-programming-language
3. I once got obsessed about bootstrappability and created a self-hosting software development environment, starting from a 512-byte seed in the boot sector. I wrote a series of blog posts about the effort. Some of them still kinda hold up after a few years...
"Fitting a Forth in 512 bytes" https://compilercrim.es/bootstrap/miniforth/
btw if you encounter a paywalled academic article on which scihub doesn't work, feel free to message me and I might be able to help out :3
rail traffic organisation rule 34, kink implied, long
Ir-1 is the instruction manual issued by PKP PLK (the Polish railways infrastructure company), that details the rules of how rail traffic should be conducted on their infrastructure. in particular, section 34 (or rule 34, if you will) details the procedure of how trains servicing spur lines should be handled
in particular, some rarely-used spur lines might branch off at a place where there is no outpost dedicated to handling this switch. to make sure that trains can run on the main line safely, a special-purpose mechanical lock is mounted on the moving parts of the switch to make sure that it cannot be operated without the key
the switch gets locked in the primary (straight-ahead) position, and the key is stored in the dispatcher's building on one of the two stations neighbouring the stretch of track that involves the spur line
when a train that's scheduled to drive onto the spur line is about to be dispatched, the crew is handed the key to the rail switch. until they return it, the track is considered occupied, and no other trains may depart onto the track.
once the key is returned, the switch is guaranteed to be in the primary position again, and trains can again drive on the tracks as if the spur line isn't there
so, to summarize:
– all the fun parts get securely locked to make sure they cannot be used without permission
– the key is a physical embodiment of permission and control
– the key is held by a person in a position of authority
– given a good enough reason, the key can be sometimes issued to allow making use of the locked mechanism
– however, the rules are strict: the key must be returned promptly
mei